So long and thanks for all the fish

Paul Norton

Paul Norton is originally from Melbourne, but now lives in Brisbane and teaches and researches at Griffith University. He has a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Environmental Science, and did his Ph.D. on the relationship between the environmental and labour movements in the period of the Hawke and Keating Federal Labor Governments. He enjoys reading, cycling absurd distances, attempting to play guitar, dabbling in songwriting and watching AFL matches on weekends in winter. He is a member of the Greens, the NTEU and the Australia Institute, likes drinking chardonnay but doesn't drink latte.

Quadrant magazine, the self-described “leading general intellectual journal of ideas, literature, poetry and historical and political debate published in Australia” has published a book titled The Howard Era. The book is co-edited by Quadrant editor Keith Windschuttle, University of Queensland […]

Today’s Age reports that, according to research by the Inter-Parliamentary Union: Women’s representation in parliaments is most likely to increase where there is some sort of system of quotas, an analysis of international elections held last year shows. Whatever the […]

The answer is: don’t know, and not particularly fussed one way or any of the other three, but let’s see whether this thread can spin as long as one with a similar title and theme from back in the day. […]

It’s time, methinks, for the first condemn thread of the revived LP. Feel free to condemn the living daylights out of whatever has got your goat recently – but do try to keep this thread stoush-free. To kick things off, […]

The MSM has extensively reported Martin Ferguson’s statement, in his resignation speech, that “The class war rhetoric that started with the mining dispute of 2010 must cease. It is doing the Labor Party no good…”. The Murdoch press, and its […]

In short, current poll support for the election of an Abbott-led Coalition government is soft and brittle. Yet it exists, and persists. And voter opinion of what the Federal Labor government has actually done is not all that unfavourable. Yet people don’t think the government deserves to be reelected. What are we to make of this?

Whilst our attention has been focused on the disaster that struck Queensland on the weekend, a major international conference, Planet Under Pressure, is currently under way in London. Here’s a report on what leading scientists have being saying at the […]

I have previously posted about the potential pitfalls of framing the fire hazard reduction task in Australian landscapes in terms of simple numerical targets, which I characterised as a Big Dumb Number approach. Nonetheless, the Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission decided […]

Many LP contributors and readers will have come across the principles of Open Space Technology (OST) at social movement gatherings. These principles are: 1. Whoever turns up are the right people. 2. It starts when it’s meant to. 3. You […]